08/30/2023
The County of Essex is attempting to pass a bylaw that would transfer the responsibility for waste collection to the County, under the aegis of the Province of Ontario’s Food and Organic Waste Framework, which is an initiative to reduce the amount of food waste going into landfills. While the initiative has it’s obvious benefits, the Town of Essex is exempt from the government mandate due to it’s relatively low population and population density. The County’s plan is to have Essex residents subsidize organics collection for other municipalities that are required by the province to begin organics collection. (Lakeshore and Kingsville are also exempt from the provincial mandate). The County also plans to substantially reduce traditional garbage collection by 50% (from weekly to once every two weeks), and to completely drop yard waste collection for the months of December, January, February, and March. This will result in a reduction of service for Essex residents, while requiring them to pay more taxes overall due to the addition of proposed weekly organics collection. Essex County claims that they can reduce the costs of waste collection using economies of scale, but the County has provided absolutely no proof of this, and has neglected to account for the extra costs of organics collection which are not required for the Town of Essex. An organics survey conducted by the EWSWA last year showed that 42% of respondents do not want a reduction in traditional garbage collection - and that was the largest percentage response on the topic of waste collection frequency.
